Current Mention

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 28, 1910

— A number of daring robberies of valuable gems and jewelry have occurred recently in Pullman cars running in the vicinity of Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond.

— While engaged in target practise on July 21, at Fort Monroe, Va., 11 men were killed and several seriously injured as the result of the blowing out of a breach block in one of the 12-inch guns. The safety devices on the gun, supposed to make a premature explosion impossible, failed to work.

— The enterprising and up-to-date city of Buenos Aires has reached the place where some relief for the traffic that crowds its streets is necessary. The city government has approved a comprehensive plan for electrically operated subways; and the concessions have been secured by the Anglo-Argentine Tramway Companies and the tramway company of Buenos Aires.

— Whitefield McKinlay, a prominent Negro of Washington, D. C., has been appointed by President Taft to the important office of collector of customs at Georgetown.

— An exemplary stand was recently taken by the mayor of Des Moines, when he refused to deliver an address of welcome to the Iowa Retail Liquor Dealers’ Association at their convention.

— The lowest temperature yet recorded was registered Aug. 30, 1909, by a thermometer sent up in a “sounding balloon” to a height of 12 miles. The ascent was made at Shirati, on Victoria Nyanza; and the temperature recorded was 119.7° below zero Fahrenheit.

— The twenty-second annual statistical report of the Interstate Commerce Commission, just issued, shows that 8,722 persons were killed, and 95,626 injured, on the railroads in the United States during the year ending June 30, 1909. This is one passenger killed for every 3,523,606 carried; and one injured for every 86,458 carried.

— Six hundred acres of a large estate in the Adirondacks was burned over recently in an attempt by the mountaineers to destroy the whole preserve. The owner incurred the ill will of the natives by closing the old trails, driving all fishing and hunting parties off the estate, and placing an armed guard of fifty men in charge to enforce his regulations.

— “The United States and Great Britain have signed a treaty which will serve to regulate the use of water for commercial purposes at Niagara Falls. According to the provisions, the New York side will be permitted to take 20,000 cubic feet from the river above the falls, and the Canadian side may divert 36,000 cubic feet. The treaty contains a provision which allows the Canadian companies to transmit and sell on the United States side at least fifty per cent of the power generated in Canada.”

— After a bitter fight of six years the Bucks Stove and Range Company of St. Louis, Mo., yielded unequivocally to the demands of organized labor in a “peace conference” held July 19, and made up of the officers of the company and representatives of the American Federation of Labor. The company agrees to abandon its open-shop policy, and hereafter employ none but union men. This capitulation follows the death, in May last, of James W. Van Cleave, who was the head of the Bucks Company, and the leader of the antiunion fight. Labor leaders are elated over this victory.

— Further particulars regarding the remarkable plebiscite on prohibition recently taken in Sweden illustrate the thorough nature of the agitation in that Scandinavian country. The state was sown almost knee deep with prohibition tracts; an army of volunteer workers were enrolled; and the question was discussed in every church and chapel throughout the land. The overwhelming victory for prohibition confirms the judgment of a well-known writer, that “Sweden has been changed in a few generations from one of the drunkenest countries of the world to the soberest.” In all the country parts of Sweden, with a population of four millions, there are at present only about 140 spirit shops.